Ethics

Abstract

In this brief annual review of ethical issues in medicine, Pellegrino focuses on two issues, AIDS and surrogate mothers. The AIDS epidemic has generated debate over public health needs vs. individual rights, modification of sexual practices, screening programs to detect infected persons, confidentiality of test results, experimental therapies, and the duty of physicians to care for AIDS patients. Surrogate motherhood arrangements have become one of the more controversial of the new reproductive technologies. The publicity that accompanied the custody battle over New Jersey's "Baby M" intensified debate over the commercialization of childbearing and the regulation of reproduction. Pellegrino concludes that physicians, along with ethicists and policymakers, have an obligation to "lead society in careful and judicious deliberation" of the ethical issues raised by AIDS and by reproductive technologies. (KIE abstract)